“There’s a huge factory there,” Campuzano (6-0) said of Mount Pleasant, Texas, where he moved with his mother and his sister after they left Mexico when he was 2 years old. “On Fridays you can smell the chicken boiling, and it’s disgusting. I can go anywhere and know that smell.”

It’s more than a smell he’s trying to avoid. In struggling to leave that hometown and keep from becoming another of the thousands of workers in its chicken factory, Campuzano has become a skilled mixed martial arts fighter who has started his professional career 6-0.

His biggest break yet comes Oct. 10, when Campuzano will fight Damacio Page (11-4) at WEC 43. He is a late replacement in the fight for Akitoshi Tamura, who was scratched because of injury.

The 135-pound fight in San Antonio will come in the same state in which Campuzano went from a trouble-making kid from a single-mother home to a committed MMA fighter who remains hungry working from fight to fight to prove he can make it in the sport.

That’s one of the reasons the Dallas-based, 23-year-old Campuzano was quick to take the fight in late September despite the short notice. Its appearance on the Versus-televised main card gives him a major chance to show a wider audience what he can do.

“I’m just glad I have a fight, I haven’t been able to work much,” Campuzano said. “Shows have been canceling on me, so I haven’t been making much money, and it’s been some pretty rough times. I know how big of a chance this is.”

Chicken town

When Campuzano was about one year old, his father told his mother he was going to the United States to find work and would send for the family. He never did.

Later on, when he was about 19, Campuzano finally got the full story from his grandmother. His father, in fact, had found another woman and started an entirely new family in his new country. Not only that, but it was the fourth or fifth such family his father had started.

Campuzano’s mother landed in Mount Pleasant for work in the factory.

“I remember being in the first grade and noticing for the first time that everyone else had two parents and I just had my mother,” Campuzano said. “It wasn’t a big deal until I started going to friends’ houses and they had fathers.

“I used to have a bunch of pictures of him, but I burned them. I poked his eyes out of the pictures and then I burned them.”

Campuzano’s mother was often working second jobs after his shifts at the factory, so Campuzano was largely responsible for himself and his sister. He supplemented with action movies, whose stars became the main male characters in his life.

His mother also loved boxing, which brought televised violence into the home from Campuzano’s earliest days. He was drawn to the man-against-man quality of the fights.

He also started fighting often in school, falling in with a tough crowd that drew him away from studies and more toward trouble. His small size got him picked on, and he reacted.

“I was so skinny,” Campuzano said. “People would say I looked like Bruce Lee in hungry times.”

Eventually, Campuzano didn’t like that many of his friends had dropped out of school, impregnated girls and were having big troubles in life. They were afraid to go certain places because of rival groups.

“By the time I was 17,” he said, “I wanted something else.”

YouTube sensation

Campuzano was out of high school and taking classes at a community college in Mount Pleasant when he took his first tae kwon do class. Some people in the class introduced Campuzano to a local gym, where, after sparring and training for MMA for just two weeks, he took his first amateur fight.

“When we started fighting, it was so exciting, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it afterward,” Campuzano said.

About a year and a half ago, Campuzano took part in an eight-man, featherweight tournament. He won his three fights that night and took the tournament championship, which helped encourage him to turn professional.

After leaving school and moving to Dallas, Campuzano looked at his 6-0 professional record and his successes there and sought his first pro fight. A month before the fight, though, a larger sparring partner clipped him with a body shot.

“I couldn’t spar for months, but the guy they gave me (for the pro fight) was one of those guys who just takes a paycheck, some bum,” Campuzano said.

That fight, in July 2008, started a pro career in which Campuzano has won all six fights by stoppage in a variety of organizations.

In the seven-month period from October 2008 to May 2009, Campuzano fought four times. The last fight, against Tim Snyder at an Urban Rumble Championships event, ended after 2:59 with a TKO.

Campuzano has ensured all of his fights have been posted on YouTube, where fans can see his toughness. In his third fight, for instance, Campuzano was caught up by an opponent and heard his kneecap pop. The opponent, in fact, also heard the pop, and he relented a bit. But Campuzano didn’t tap, and he finished the fight.

“I just don’t tap,” he said.

It’s a toughness that could earn him plenty of fans during the WEC broadcast on Oct. 10. Even though he has scratched and clawed his way to his big chance, Campuzano isn’t nervous or worried. He’s more looking forward to the opportunity.

“I don’t have anything to lose,” Campuzano said.

Award-winning newspaper reporter Kyle Nagel is the lead features writer for MMAjunkie.com. His weekly “Fight Path” column focuses on the circumstances that led fighters to a profession in MMA. Know a fighter with an interesting story? Email us at news [at] mmajunkie.com.

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